Migrants were once welcomed - what happened?

There was a time when migrants arriving in search of better fortunes was nothing to be ashamed of.

National Archives of Australia

Australia has a proud history of welcoming migrants to our shores, where they have enriched our society. Where's the political party that celebrates this rather than punishes new arrivals? Richard Hughes writes.

Like many people, I am appalled at refugee policy on both sides of politics.

The last Commonwealth election was, in part, about competitive cruelty to seagoing coloureds. The previous government had reintroduced offshore processing and re-opened the Pacific hells so redolent of Papillon.

Their successors, possessed perhaps of steelier nerves though no greater morality, have since delivered new horrors including an absolute silence on the fate of the unfortunates daring to flee here.

The last week may well have seen Australia knowingly return hundreds of people to their torturers for further abuse, rape and murder. But there is no official confirmation. The boat never existed. The people never existed. The Indian Ocean has become an oubliette.

There's a piece missing here: why has no political party articulated a real policy about refugees? A policy that is humane, socially and economically acceptable, and fully thought through.

Partisans on either side will point to their existing platforms, but I mean something a little bigger. Much as we laughed when the mining barons wanted a low-wage, migrant-powered workforce in the north, there was a glimmer there. Somebody was thinking about the big picture.

Consider this: between 1949 and 1970, Australia received more than 350,000 Italians and 180,000 Greeks. There were also 213,000 Germans, 95,000 Yugoslavs and 17,000 Spaniards, among others. That's more than 850,000 non-Anglos, more than half of whom had been our enemies a few years before.

Society, I am told, did not collapse. Foreign values and religious sects did not overrun the country. And yes, many of those southern Europeans tended to have large families, and create ethnic enclaves, and retain their languages and customs. And still society did not collapse. Even though most of those people were what is now called economic migrants.

They sought better lives in a new place. Apparently, that was nothing to be ashamed of in those days.

Just after that, from 1975 onwards, there was another wave of migrants from another completely alien place. More than 200,000 Vietnamese people live in Australia now. Almost 30,000 came between the 2006 and 2011 census. Certainly economic migrants, those later ones. And still Australian society muddles through, somehow.

Who could deny that our migrants enrich us beyond measure? Would Australia be better without its ethnic communities? Should we give up influences from the olive to architecture? Are our lives not better for the art, music, laughter and life, cuisine and style that our foreign-born Australians and their children have brought us?

So why are we not seeking a way to continue our regeneration, our national enrichment? People from Africa and south and central Asia and the Middle East are mad keen to join us. What cultural riches they will bring, if we let them. We would be crazy not to seize this opportunity to grow.

Where is the political party - any political party - working to do what we once did with the Vietnamese and the Europeans? Who has the vision to see new arrivals not as an inconvenience but as an opportunity?

Is the Australian story really so finished that there are no new communities to be built, no great nation-building schemes to be made real by a million new, willing hands? Do we really prefer to skulk in our hideous suburbs - the same from Darwin to Sydney - watching our big televisions and all being the same? Who dares welcome the newcomers and set them to work?

That's what is missing in this polity right now. Nobody seems to think beyond the immediate problems of categorisation and immigration processing - mere necessary nuisances.

Who is looking 20 years ahead to see something to match half the bakeries in Australia given a French twist by their new Vietnamese owners? Or the style and passion of the Italian tailors of Richmond?

That's where we ought to be looking. Not that a tiny fraction of them might be enemies or criminals. Have some confidence that the law enforcement and security agencies we already have can deal with problems as they arise, and focus policy on the vast majority who simply want to live new lives in peace here.

My vote is only one. But the party that has a real vision for this wave of migrants is a red-hot favourite to get that one vote. And there just might be a lot of people ready to vote the same way.

Richard Hughes is a Canberra-based writer and the author of Days of Vengeance. He tweets @RichardDHughes. View his full profile here.